http://www.dslreports.com/forum/How-should-I-plan-my-career-transition-in-tech-industry-31290577 en Thu, 24 Mar 2022 12:08:37 EDT Thu, 24 Mar 2022 12:08:37 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-How-should-I-plan-my-career-transition-in-tech-industry-31292258
Having someone looking for you is a force multiplier you can't afford to pass up.

You may have to settle for less money than you think you're worth . There is an oversupply of young people willing to work long hours in the IT field for little money and you'll be dragged down with them. No matter how good you really are, your skills have a finite value that is closely pinned to how much everyone else is earning. ]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-How-should-I-plan-my-career-transition-in-tech-industry-31292258 Tue, 07 Mar 2017 20:04:48 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-How-should-I-plan-my-career-transition-in-tech-industry-31291414
I'd suggest talking to your manager about the infrastructure support. From that conversation you can see if you should stay where you are or look for greener pastures. You might consider working contract for a year or so to get some higher level experience. Getting a certificate for linux admin, CompTIA has a Linux+, might also be a good investment.

I'm sure my resume gets tossed all of the time for not having a degree, but my 20 years of experience in a wide variety of industries is valuable to those that will hire me.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-How-should-I-plan-my-career-transition-in-tech-industry-31291414 Tue, 07 Mar 2017 13:27:49 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-How-should-I-plan-my-career-transition-in-tech-industry-31291348
I ended up in the Radiology Informatics department at a hospital here in New Mexico. Basically, I / we troubleshoot the diagnostic reading stations for the radiologists and residents, troubleshoot their hospital provided laptops, and then deal with the actual imaging (X-Ray, CT, MRI, PET) studies when the technologists / clinicians or the radiologists screw something up.

Might be something to look into. I know we have guys doing networking, IT security, etc. so the opportunities are there.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-How-should-I-plan-my-career-transition-in-tech-industry-31291348 Tue, 07 Mar 2017 12:57:06 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/How-should-I-plan-my-career-transition-in-tech-industry-31290577 Next year I got hired at a Russian startup where I thought I had good prospect to become either senior systems engineers or devops. Then my boss quit 4 months later after he could not handle daily outages due to the shitty infrastructure the company deployed. While I was handling customer service, people's laptops and little projects, he was taking care of infrastructure where I helped some of the time. I did not really want to to downgrade any of my time to help desk after doing NOC and datacenter, server infrastructure support, but the company was small so they hired me as IT Support Engineer to be jack of all trades.
Before he quit he hired VP to take care of overhauling bad infrastructure at my company. After this, all hell broke loose. I was non-stop on page alerts evenings, weekends for so long that it worn me out. I was not getting paid overtime. Then my VP hired someone below him as director to fill the vacant space my former boss left. A month later or so he hired some another support engineer to who he delegated all infrastructure projects while I got left with nothing sitting on the desk and training my peer. Not feeling good about this situation, I have been looking for a job in linux system administration but nobody wanted to hire me. In the end I found full-time job at top fortune tech company that does shipping :). However, it is full-time helpdesk job. I took it but what alternative did I have? They also promised I would do some infrastructure support and train me. But now I have been there for some time half year and all I am doing is help desk on laptops.

I have BS degree in IT and experience in NOC for 5 years last one being mix of data center and helpdesk. When I graduated college I tried to get into networking but I never got in.

Now I am trying to get into next level but don't want to do networking anymore. Should I pursue linux system administration, software development engineering or devops.

When I was in college, I was average in software programming but of course it is not the same as real world experience and never had one. Obviously, I would like a field where I don't get asked to baby sit pager duty calls. I was on it and it terrible sucked.

I can't afford to go back to college full-time since I am in student loan debt now and pay rent. In addition to that, I learnd in IT field, a college degree is not that important and overrated while not worth the cost.

Also don't have any friends here. I have only acquaintances at work but they all just love helpdesk support and they have no ambition to move up.

What should I do? What options should I explore? ]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/How-should-I-plan-my-career-transition-in-tech-industry-31290577 Tue, 07 Mar 2017 03:22:12 EDT